Seeing your point but assuming you bump into that wasps nest at the bottom of your garden you really won't care that it's been there for decades without harming you, or that the dog next door bit you last week.

Ok, so nukes have a non-proliferation agreement and, quite frankly, you'd have to be mad to use them again on anything. Cyber weapons may not be as immediately and spectacularly damaging, but something like Stuxnet proves that they can cause physical damage. If Stuxnet was modified, who's to say that it could not be repurposed to hit something else instead of a centrifuge?

Where's the cyber weapon non-proliferation treaty?

Oh, and that was just one virus out of many flowing round the internet. If you want to be sensible, ban them all globally and make countries lock up the authors. I'm sure that will go down well with some countries.

Iran as a country is totally bonkers and is run by people who are bonkers. They openly state they want to destroy Israel, they arm extremists in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Aghanistan. If they gained a nuclear capability it would be a really bad thing for everyone. Regardless of how twatty Israeli and US foreign policy is or has been.

Americans have given Israel nuclear weapons but luckily they have a great record of behaving impeccably when it comes to using "attack as the best form of defence", I mean that illegal white phosphorous attack on gaza and the UN just sort of happened by magic didn't it ?

Iran having nukes may actually stop the silly feckers for a while.....or start world war 3, but hey they're liked by the yanks so that makes them the good guys doesn't it

nonesense are you suggesting north korea and pakistan are stable countries you would give the bomb too? We also had communist russia, China and South Africa

Why be more worried about Iran than them ? the real reason is if you have nukes no one can bully you that is what we fear -well and israel doing something as their track record of offensive defence is rather long and inglorious. Offensively it is a useless weapon. It's like me having a grenade in a room with you. It is of no use in helping me win the fight but I can take you with me thatis what nukes give you, everyone leave you alone.

FWIW france and the UK gave israel [ the technology to make]nukes rather than the US

Except the irony seems to be that Fukushima was struggling to shut down due to technical issues, which indicates that the worm also struck there, and now the US is being hit with the radiation fallout from Japan.

1) There was already a full scale world war on so it didn't do much that wasn't happening already - it just did it all in one go.
2) The bomb was way less powerful than a modern one
3) 30 years of cold war angst had not happened
4) Many people thought (and still think) that by bringing a terribly bloody war to an end very quickly it actually saved many many lives
5) It was the first time it had happened, no-one had seen the consequences.

You said that nukes were a useless weapon because you kill yourself at the same time as everyone else due to retaliation. I was trying to say that some cultures might not view that kind of death the same way.

Not saying that Iran would think that way - it's pretty drastic, and you'd have to stretch things to consider nuked civilians as dying honourably in battle, but you never know.

they key there would be in battle -they may do it defensively but offensively?
The regime would be destroyed by the subsequent attack and what is the point being the dead ruler of a barren nuclear wasteland? That why I think it is unlikely a sate would use them that is bonkers as they crave power above all things. Take North Korea as batty as can be but any attack means the end of the regime so our dear leader [ is this one just honourable?] wont use them as it is to kill yourself and your power base.
I think this applies to all states.
I understand why some may be sacred but the fear but I think it is misplaced. we dont want them to have the power to stand up to us IMHO. Probably easier to befriend russia and china if syria is anything to go by

I don’t delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel. They have their history of 4,000 years. They look around and they see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan in nuclear as well as South Korea, not to mention the Russians.

Sadly it appears that Iran has no intentions of acquiring nuclear weapons, well that's what the Israeli military chief reckons anyway:

According to the US intelligence community Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons programm. Israeli intelligence agrees with this view

The US intelligence community set out this view in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in November 2007. It remains the view of the US intelligence community today.

So it appear a nuclear imbalance will remain in the Middle East. Although I guess that if the West continues to threaten Iran with attacks and invasion then they might hopefully change their minds and acquire nuclear weapons, thereby averting war.

Like many people I openly want to see the Zionist State destroyed, in much the same way as I wanted to see the Apartheid State destroyed. It is a perfectly legitimate opinion to hold. I don't expect to be physically attacked for having that opinion.

Seems to me we're having the wrong argument here, about nuclear weapons... When you ask the question "Who should be allowed to have them", the answer isn't "Well America, Britain, maybe Israel, but not Iran or Pakistan..." It's "nobody at all"